Former Women’s Physique Olympia champion Dana Linn Bailey and bodybuilding coach Joe Bennett got together for a shoulder workout at Bailey’s WarHouse Gym. Their training session was published on Bailey’s YouTube channel on Sep. 13, 2022.
If you don’t know who Joe Bennett is, he has tortured me many, many times. Today is going to be no different.
Bailey followed Bennett’s lead in the gym as he guided her through seven movements with a lot of time under tension for hypertrophy. Check it out below:
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Joe Bennett and Dana Linn Bailey’s Shoulder Workout
Below are the exercises in the same order performed by Bennett and Bailey during their workout:
- Lying Reverse Lateral Cable Flyes
- Standing Reverse Cable Flyes, Incline Reverse Static Holds, Partial Flyes
- Superset: Machine Shoulder Press & Iron Cross
- Seated Y Raises, Face Pulls, Lying Rope Upright Rows, & Lying Rope Presses
Check out the breakdown of each movement Bailey performed under the direction of Rambod:
Lying Reverse Lateral Cable Flyes
The lying reverse lateral cable flye was the opening movement. The Bennett favorite is a hybrid between a rear delt flye and a lying lateral raise that emphasizes the side delts. Bailey used cuffs instead of handles to put better load delts and remove grip strength as a limiting factor.
Bennett rigged the cables so that the balls at each end didn’t interrupt her full range of motion. They worked through several grueling sets to failure. Bennett added manual assistance to knock out additional reps.
Reverse Cable Flyes, Incline Rear Delt Holds, & Incline Partial Reverse Dumbbell Flyes
Standing reverse cable flyes were second in the queue. Bailey squeezed at the peak contraction of each rep to fully engage the rear delts. Immediately after reverse cable flyes, Bennett had Bailey perform a giant set comprised of static rear delt holds to failure and partial reverse incline dumbbell flyes to failure.
Bennett believes high-volume heavy training combined is excellent for growing the shoulders. His programming for Bailey biases the rear delts — hit lacking body parts when energy is high.
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Superset: Seated Machine Shoulder Press & Iron Cross Holds
Onto a compound movement, Bennett has the Bailey hit a seated machine variation of the shoulder press, focusing on slow controlled reps. This bread-and-butter movement is more effective with the muscles pre-exhausted, making less weight necessary to effectively stimulate the muscle and is, therefore, safer on the joints. After several straight sets of shoulder presses, Bennett lined up a superset of machine shoulder presses with iron cross holds to failure.
Seated Y Raises, Face Pulls, Lying Upright Rows, Lying Rope Presses
Last but not least was a quad-movement set tailored for Bailey. The movements were performed back-to-back, and they all featured a rope.
The set opened with seated overhead Y raises into seated rope face pulls. Then it was on to lying rope upright rows before pumping lying rope presses to failure.
Yikes, that was good!
Bailey is currently on a hiatus from competitive bodybuilding to focus on her fitness apparel company, Flag Nor Fail, and her home life. She did not state in the video if there were any current plans for her return to the competitive stage. However, Hany Rambod teased it with a recent caption on his Instagram that featured a video of their recent workout together.
As a former Women’s Physique Olympia champion, Bailey has a lifetime invite to compete on the grandest stage in the sport. We’ll see if her recent collaborations are a preview of her potential competitive return.
Featured image: @danalinnbaileyon Instagram